1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of recording and reproducing packet data. This invention also relates to an apparatus for recording and reproducing packet data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Some digital transmission systems such as a digital television broadcasting system send a stream of packets of digital data. Such digital data will be also referred to as packet data hereafter.
It is known to record and reproduce packet data on and from a recording medium. A known recording and reproducing system receives a packet data stream composed of a mixture of video packets related to a video signal and audio packets related to an audio signal. The known system records the video packets and the audio packets on a recording medium in a sequence equal to the sequence of the reception of the packets. The known system reproduces the video packets and the audio packets from the recording medium in a sequence equal to the sequence of the reception of the packets.
An example of the known recording and reproducing system is a helical-scan VTR (video tape recorder). During a high-speed playback mode (a search mode) of operation of the helical-scan VTR, video information is partially recovered from recorded video packets. In this case, it is not intended that audio information should be reproduced.